Woman of Moral Stories

She had a very unhappy childhood. She lost her mother when she was eleven and saw her suffer when the mother had to give her daughters in adoption owing to their dire straits living. She had a good patron who paid dowry on behalf of her to have her live happily, which turned out to be a severe disaster. Her husband was dissolute and her marriage got annulled after two years. She was Jeanne Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, the French woman writer of the eighteenth century. All her personal suffering gave her resource for her writing and made her a writer of didactic tales for young people, especially girls. Beauty and the Beast is one such tale of hers and she uses it to instruct the young girls. The writer believes in right upbringing, possession of righteousness, simplicity and moral uprightness amongst young people as traits to be honed for decent living. Most of her tales reflect all these notions of hers. Once upon a time there lived a merchant. He was very rich and had three beautiful daughters. Of the three the last one was very kind and simple and helped all. She was not haughty and carried herself in all humility and treated the rich, the poor, the invalid and the healthy alike. The people of the town began calling her beauty and soon it became her name. On the contrary her two elder sisters were unkind, rough and in possession of stolid temperament. It so happened that the merchant all of a sudden lost all his wealth and chose to live in penurious condition. Beauty did all the chores as there were no servants whereas her two sisters were busy finding suitable matches for them. They got rejected by wealthy gentlemen who had been rejected by the two sisters when they were rich on the ground that those gentlemen were not super rich. The two sisters were of the opinion that Beauty was meant for menial life only and never partook in daily chores to help her. One day the merchant got information that if he could take a trip he would get back at least half of his lost wealth. So the father bade farewell and departed with the intention of satisfying the requests of his daughters. The eldest needed a diamond necklace, the second needed a suite of pearls and Beauty simply needed a white rose. The journey was fructifying and the merchant could find the requirements of his first two daughters and was in disconsolation as he could not find any white rose. He was taking his trip back and found a palatial house with fine garden overlooking and an avenue of lemon and orange trees.